Wyden, Ronald Lee (1949-…), has been a United States senator since 1996. Wyden, a Democrat, represents Oregon.
In 1996, following several nationally publicized crashes of large passenger airliners, Senator Wyden urged the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to release information on the safety records of airlines. The FAA began posting that information on the internet in 1997.
Wyden was born in Wichita, Kansas, on May 3, 1949. His family soon moved to Palo Alto, California, where he attended school. Wyden received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Stanford University in 1971 and a law degree from the University of Oregon in 1974.
In 1974, Wyden cofounded the Oregon Gray Panthers, an organization that fights age discrimination. He served as its director until 1980. Wyden worked as an instructor at the University of Oregon in 1975 and 1976 and at Portland State University in 1979 and 1980. From 1977 to 1979, he was director of Oregon Legal Services for the Elderly.
In 1980, Wyden was elected to the United States House of Representatives. He was reelected seven times. In January 1996, Wyden won a special election to finish the term of U.S. Senator Bob Packwood, who had resigned. Wyden resigned his House seat in February 1996 and began serving in the U.S. Senate. In 1998, Wyden was elected to his own Senate term, which began in January 1999. He was reelected in 2004, 2010, 2016, and 2022.
